5 Adversities Every Female Leader Faces And How To Conquer Them

And let’s face it, you’re human! What more can you do, besides push yourself past your limits and hope for the best?

As an entrepreneur, you will face many challenges on a daily basis. As a female entrepreneur, it’s very likely that you might face even more problems of inequality on a daily basis.

Maintaining Your Feminine Demeanor In a Male-Dominated Environment

I love the aggressiveness that comes with a lot of men. The competition, the drive, the push that we see take over the work place. Women, by nature, are less assertive, and oftentimes, working in that environment can become overwhelming.

Business News Daily describes a scenario you’re probably familiar with: You walk into a seminar and you find that you’re one of the few woman there.

“In this sort of situation, women may feel as though they need to adopt a stereotypically “male” attitude toward business: competitive, aggressive and sometimes overly harsh.”

If you’re surrounded by this attitude, it’s very likely you will project it back, in fear of being undermined. To keep from doing this, try to keep your confidence levels high. Remind yourself who you are and what you have to offer, and maintain that cool feminine persona of yours.

If you let the fear of failure consume your life, it will. Everyone falls at some point throughout their lives; pick yourself back up and keep going. Life Hackerdoes an excellent job of breaking down the initial perception of fear:

“The fear of failure is a very real defense and reaction by your mind. The reaction serves, for the most part, to try to protect you from perceived threats. The key word here is ‘perceived’ threats.”

Check out How Can I Overcome My Fear of Failureto read up on how to overcome this phenomenon. These threats that we’ve become afraid of facing are just doubts in the back of the mind. Fight, ignore, and challenge your fear- whatever works best for you.

You’re able to overcome any obstacle you foresee heading your way, as long as you’re in the right mindset.

It takes failure to get back up again and fight back stronger.

Women Have Less Mentors To Look Up To

Although women hold 52% of business and professional positions, they hold less than 30% of top-category jobs. American Progress’s, “Fact Sheet: The Women’s Leadership Gap” gives their breakdown,

“[Women] are only 14.6 percent of executive officers, 8.1 percent of top earners, and 4.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.”

This lack of women in these positions poses a difficulty to find like-minded women who are rising to get to the top.

“The Top 5 Challenges Women Entrepreneurs Face Today,” by Women Success Coaching suggests to always lean on an experienced entrepreneur in order to learn more about the world of business and areas in which you might not be too familiar with. They also suggest websites like BusinessAdvising.org that exist in order to connect with mentors and advisors.

Being A Mother and A Boss-Ass Bitch

It’s very clear that being a mother is a full time job. Having a child to take care of 24/7 is not an easy task.

Being a mother and a boss is draining and difficult to balance. With two responsibilities that require your full attention all the time, it can become very depleting to try and split your time and effort.

Working Mother is a website dedicated to helping moms achieve that balance they’re looking for. With everything from recipes to research, make the internet your friend to find a schedule that works best for you.

Overcoming Societal Standards of Women

Since we were children, society tells us what our roles should be. Girls and boys, women and men- everyone has a ‘part’ to play.

For women, so many standards are applied in our every day lives: We feel pressure to act a certain way, look a certain way, walk, talk, and move a certain way.

“I think what’s holding women back has less to do with personal decisions, and more to do with societal decisions. The maternity leave policy in the U.S. is one of the worst in developed countries globally. The Violence Against Women Act struggled to pass last year in spite of 1 in 5 women getting sexually assaulted on college campuses. And women leaders can’t take media opportunities without a barrage of comments on their breasts and/or wrinkles. With the deck stacked against us, being a woman leader is an uphill battle and we’re all just trying to navigate it as best we can.”

Remember: You are enough. No matter what you’re doing or where you are, be proud of yourself and your accomplishments- no matter how big or small.